Professors Dillig Join the Computer Science Faculty

Meet the Dilligs. The successful husband-and-wife team
arrived on campus with impressive teaching experience, robust enthusiasm, and a
sizable research grant.

The couple began their search for two faculty positions last
year, after meeting, marrying, and finishing their Ph.D. work at Stanford
University in California.

“We had a two-body problem we were trying to solve,” says
Isil Dillig, who is originally from Istanbul, Turkey, and moved to the United
States to attend college. “It is especially difficult that we are in the same
department, because there are not many schools that have two positions open.”

After interviewing at 11 universities in the United States
and Europe, the Dilligs narrowed their decision to a final two – William and
Mary and Virginia Tech.

“I liked that William and Mary offered a small and growing
department rather than a large and established one,” says Isil Dillig. “We felt
like we could have a greater impact here. Other schools placed a strong
emphasis on quantity, not quality. I think if you do good research, the rest
will follow.”

Tom and Isil both liked William and Mary’s comfortable and
supportive, collegial feel as well as the vision and values set forth by the
Computer Science Department. The couple was also impressed by the undergraduate
and graduate students they met while interviewing here.

“I had the hardest time with the graduate students here,”
says Tom Dillig, who grew up in Germany and moved to the United States in 2002.
“They asked the toughest questions, and I was very impressed that they cared so
much.”

Isil was also happy with the department’s balance of women
faculty and current efforts to encourage more female students to consider the
major.

“More women need to try computer science and see for
themselves if they like it,” says Isil Dillig. “I can see how the stereotypes
of nerdy guys working in a dark room can influence a decision, because I
thought the same thing. Then my opinion changed once I took a class. Now I tell
women, if you enjoy math, definitely take a computer science class.”

The
Dilligs also arrived with a funded research project, allowing them to help
support the Ph.D. students who are working with them and thus saving the
department money that can be allocated elsewhere.

The couple’s research focuses on programming languages and
program verification. In addition to other projects, they are currently working
with two other principal investigators on a two-year Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) grant to
develop theories and tools to automatically find security vulnerabilities in
mobile applications, particularly in the Android application platform.

“We
are taking technology that we and others have developed, and we are showing how
it can be applied to mobile applications,” says Tom Dillig. “This is a relatively
new space that only appeared about two years ago. We are at the front of the
problem, not the back.”

Tom
and Isil work collaboratively on the research, often bouncing ideas off each
other.

“I
am excited about this research, because it offers lots of opportunities to
uncover new technical challenges that the research community hasn’t dealt with
before,” says Isil Dillig. “I like that it offers theoretical outcomes that can
be applied to real things that are useful.”

The Dilligs started teaching at the College in
December, and Tom is surprised by how much he is enjoying it. “Students here
are of the same caliber as at Stanford. They put in the effort; they are really
interested, and I can see the impact. It is rewarding to see students mastering
material for the first time.”